Donald Trump Tweet Read by Pinky and The Brain

Donald J. Trump’s swearing in as the 45th President of the United States of America today took place in one of the most bitterly divided moments in recent history. The event was met with angry protests against the controversial reality television star turned politician taking place in multiple cities (with more planned for tomorrow); an unprecedented (in recent years) number of Senators and Congressmen opting to boycott the inauguration itself; and myriad celebrities publicly declining invites to perform at the previous night’s ceremonies – while supporters of the new Commander in Chief have been outspoken in criticism of the same.

At the same time, Trump being sworn into office has been an occasion for comedians, including many popular voiceover actors, to take shots at the famously mercurial public figure. Now, the original voice actors behind the famous animated characters known as Pinky and The Brain have opted to join in the fun; mocking the onetime real estate tycoon’s 2016 New Years Eve social media post on Twitter.

While initially noted on the campaign trail for his fiery, stream-of-consciousness stump speeches, Trump has become perhaps best known in terms of public speaking for his use of the Twitter social media platform to fire off angry missives that aides and/or fellow Republican colleagues are often tasked with “walking back” shortly thereafter. Voiceover actors reading said tweets in the voices of their famous villain characters has become a common go-to joke in the industry, with Mark Hammill reviving his Joker persona and Billy West invoking the spirit of his obnoxious Futurama character Captain Zapp Brannigan for the occasion.

But while Maurice Lamarche and Rob Paulson’s double-act as their rodent antiheroes from Pink and The Brain start off following that same pattern, their routine quickly heads in an alternate direction as The Brain (Lamarche) finds himself unable to finish reading one of Trump’s bizarrely-structured sentence fragments. It’s revealed that “Trump” in this case is actually a robot being manipulated by the pair, and Brain demands to know whether or not Pink (Paulson) has been putting nonsense into Trump-Bot’s mouth. When it’s revealed that he hasn’t for the duration of the election, Brain is ecstatic at the prospect of having inadvertently created artificial-intelligence – though Pinky opines that he could have done with less artificial and more intelligence.

The amusing gag (which goes on to imply that the duo have now succeeded, through Trump-Bot, in their efforts to take over the world) is in part a reference to several episodes of the characters’ eponymous animated series of the 1990s, where Pinky and The Brain (a pair of genetically-engineered laboratory mice that originated as short-subjects on the Animaniacs TV show) would often use humanoid robots as part of their elaborate world domination plans. As of yet, there has been no comment on the subject from Trump (who himself appears to have quoted the Batman supervillain Bane in his acceptance speech) administration – on Twitter or otherwise.